Seven out of ten children bullied at school, says survey

Victim of bullying: More than half of bullied children had been physically hurt and 34 per cent needed to see a doctor

The scale of school bullying emerged in the biggest ever survey of its kind.

Seven out of ten pupils complained they had suffered at the hands of school bullies with each victim claiming their tormentors had used six different techniques.

These ranged from name-calling and bullying by text message to physical attacks.

The survey of more than 8,500 children, parents and teachers also showed that youngsters were regularly kept off school because of fears over their safety.

The findings prompted calls for urgent research to find out why so many children continue to be bullied despite a raft of new strategies and initiatives designed to tackle the problem.

Some schools have adopted trendy "no blame" approaches which involve bringing tormentors and victims together to try to build "empathy" between them.

But the technique has proved controversial as culprits escape formal sanctions.

"There have never been so many trendy methods of dealing with school bullying but the results of our survey are shocking and it's time to find out which methods work and ditch the rest," said Liz Carnell, director of the charity Bullying Online.

"Parents will be shocked to learn bullying is big business but that none of the anti-bullying methods being used in schools have been evaluated in independent long-term trials."

A series of tragic suicides by pupils seeking to escape their tormentors has also sparked calls for a concerted crackdown on the problem.

The survey, conducted by Bullying Online between January and July, suggested that reporting bullying to teachers failed to stop it in more than half of cases.

"What comes across is that school anti-bullying policies are not working. Even the best policies are only seen as successful by 53 per cent of children" added Mrs Carnell.

The National Bullying Survey 2006 has been hailed the biggest ever probe into the extent of the problem.

A total of 4,772 children completed the survey. Of these, 69 per cent said they had been bullied during their school careers and 30 per cent said it had made them feel suicidal.

Each bullied pupil had suffered an average of six different types of bullying. Name-calling was the biggest problem, with most abusive remarks referring to weight and appearance.

More than half of bullied children had been physically hurt and 34 per cent needed to see a doctor. Three per cent of attacks had involved a weapon.

Youngsters also reported racist and homophobic bullying which often involved violent attacks.

Seven per cent of respondents had suffered "cyber-bullying" either through unpleasant emails or phone text messages.

Meanwhile 65 per cent of the parents questioned said they had kept their child at home for safety reasons and 63 per cent of those pupils had missed more than five days at school.

Teachers, of whom 323 took part in the survey, admitted bullying did not always stop after they had taken action.

Only 40 per cent were confident they had all the skills they needed to tackle bullying while 78 per cent wanted more in-school training.

Mrs Carnell said: "We reply to thousands of emails a year so we knew the problem was a big one, but even so we were shocked by what we found out.

"This is a scandalous situation and it needs tough measures to sort it out.

"If assaults were happening in the workplace the attackers would be prosecuted, but in many cases the bullies are getting off scot-free without any punishment at all."